


Growing Despite Concrete: A Social Criticism of Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street

by Vespera_Z



Category: Original Work, The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros
Genre: Chicago (City), Chicano/a, Critical Analysis, Essays, Historical, Identity, Immigration, Latino/a, Social Criticism, Socioeconomics, machismo/marianismo, traditional gender roles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 03:46:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11432496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vespera_Z/pseuds/Vespera_Z
Summary: This is a major paper from my Introduction to Fiction course, a 200-level college English/literature course, that received a very high grade. The purpose of this essay is to provide a social criticism ofThe House on Mango Streetin how the historical context of 1980s' Chicago and immigration, Chicano/a and machismo/marianismo cultural expectations, and socioeconomics contribute to identity formation in Esperanza.





	Growing Despite Concrete: A Social Criticism of Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street

**Author's Note:**

> This paper was an English assignment from this past semester in my last English class that I will ever have to take (pre-med/science major here!). The assignment was to apply a mode of criticism to a literary work we had read during the semester and compose a paper of at least 1500 words, and we were also required to use at least four (4) scholarly, peer-reviewed sources. Naturally, I went a little overboard. It received a very good grade with an apparently tough grader...seriously, if you are a perfectionist, be prepared.
> 
> [Note: insert here that stereotypically terrifying statement that always appears on every syllabus about plagiarism that instills that gripping trepidation and terror every time you submit an assignment despite knowing you have done no such thing.]
> 
> Please feel free to comment! I will be happy to answer any questions as well.

3 May 2017

**Growing Despite Concrete: A Social Criticism of Sandra Cisneros’s _The House on Mango Street_**

            Approximately midway through Sandra Cisneros’s _The House on Mango Street_ , Esperanza, the novella’s protagonist, compares herself to “Four skinny trees…who do not belong here but are here…Four who grew despite concrete” (Cisneros 74-75). In this poetic introspection, Esperanza’s comparison highlights how _The House on Mango Street_ illustrates the social challenges of identity formation in Hispanic immigrant, adolescent women in Chicago in the 1980s. Between 1970 and 1990, Chicago was a major destination in the United States for Latin American immigrants, increasing its Hispanic/Latino composition from seven percent to twenty percent of the city’s population (Howenstine 33, 36). As an ethnically diverse hub beyond its increasing Latino population, Chicago was spatially segregated through the establishment of “ethnic residential clusters” because of numerous possible forces, for positive and negative reasons, such as economic, discrimination and prejudice, and the propensity to settle into “concentrate[d] immigrant group” communities, a phenomenon referred to as “channeled migration” (Howenstine 33-34). _The House on Mango Street_ is set during this period of increased Latino immigration in Chicago, retrospectively illustrating a formative period of Esperanza’s life in a minority community on Mango Street in the 1980s. By investigating the influence of cultural expectations for Latino women and the nature of their application in immigrant communities as they relate to Esperanza’s social environment, _The House on Mango Street_ reveals an illustration of the sources of confinement, the “concrete,” that young, Latino women faced in 1980s’ Chicago. In the case of Esperanza, this ultimately leads to her divergence from traditional aspects of her Latino ethnic identity, specifically traditional gender roles and their extreme extensions perpetuated by the socioeconomic situation of Latino immigrants, in order to create “a house,” symbolic of her identity, “all [her] own” (Cisneros 108).

 

            The most prominent source of confinement – “concrete” – that contributes to Esperanza’s social environment evident in the novella is the expectations for Latino women, of which the extremes are exacerbated in the Latino ethnic community on Mango Street, Chicago. According to the literature research by Perilla, Bakeman, and Norris for their study on domestic abuse and Latino culture, the traditional gender roles of Latino culture dictate that “men are the dominant, authoritarian figures, whereas women are the caregivers and nurturers,” and these roles are often practiced such that men have “a high degree of control” while women have a high “degree of dependency” (Perilla et al. 326). Additionally, there is a more extreme extension of these roles, referred to as the “marianismo” and “machismo” cultural scripts (Perilla et al. 326). Marianismo is the expectation that women should be “submissive, self-sacrificing, and stoic” (Perilla et al. 326). Correspondingly, machismo refers to the expectations for men that include more positive “notions of honor, pride, courage, responsibility, and obligation to the family,” but also “imply sexual prowess, heavy alcohol consumption, and aggressive behavior, as well as the belief that men are physically and morally superior to women” (Perilla et al. 326). The results of the study suggest that the pressures placed on immigrant Latino men and the need for women to contribute to the family income post-immigration increases domestic abuse as it undermines the traditional authority figure role and the “machismo” cultural script (Perilla et al. 336-337). In the context of _The House on Mango Street_ , these traditional and extreme roles are integral to Esperanza’s ultimate decision to diverge from the traditional and marianismo Latino woman ethnic identity.

 

            The novella illustrates this finding of the Perilla, Bakeman, and Norris study regarding traditional roles as well as the prevalence of the extreme marianismo and machismo scripts in a Latino “ethnic residential cluster” (Howenstine 33) through Esperanza’s observations of the family dynamics, with a particular focus on seemingly oppressed women, in the homes on Mango Street. As succinctly described by Maria Szadziuk, “Women ill-treated by their fathers or partners are the norm [on Mango Street] rather than exception” (Szadziuk 119). Women in the story are illustrated as ultimately ascribing to the “submissive, self-sacrificing, and stoic” expectation of women under the marianismo script in addition to the traditional expectations for Latino women. They are confined to the home, submissive to and dependent on their husbands, many are abused, and are the caretakers of the home, setting aside their own, independent goals for a traditional expectation, such as with Esperanza’s mother who was “a smart cookie” and “could have been somebody” (Cisneros 90-91). Perhaps the most influential of these observations on Esperanza’s decision is the story of Sally, a peer of approximately the same age as Esperanza.

 

             Sally is described as beautiful by Esperanza, and Esperanza initially views Sally as the embodiment of who she wants to be. However, Sally’s “father says to be this beautiful is trouble. They are very strict in his religion…she can’t go out” (Cisneros 81). As evidenced in this statement, she lives in a very rigid and strict home dictated by her father. This is further supported by Esperanza’s description of how Sally becomes “a different Sally. You pull your skirt straight, you rub the blue paint off your eye lids. You don’t laugh, Sally. You look at your feet and walk fast to the house you can’t come out from” (Cisneros 82). In the “What Sally Said” vignette, Esperanza reveals that in addition to the stringent standards of her home, Sally is also abused by her father, arriving at school “all beaten and black” or missing a day entirely (Cisneros 92). This home life illustrates the manifestation of both the traditional and machismo roles in the story. Sally’s father is depicted as the authority figure of the house and controlling in accordance with the traditional roles in Latino men. He also depicts how the traditional role for men can lead into the machismo script, particularly aggressive behavior derived from his insistence that Sally adhere to the corresponding roles for women and her apparent attempts to escape those constraining expectations.

 

           Sally’s endeavor to escape these constraining, expected roles epitomized in her father’s household results in her marriage to “a marshmallow salesman” later in the novella “in another state where it’s legal to get married before eighth grade” (Cisneros 101). According to Esperanza, “she says she is in love, but I think she did it to escape,” overtly stating that she believes Sally married in an attempt to escape the confinement and abuse of her father’s home (Cisneros 101). However, she simply shifts from one place of confinement to another, and she becomes dependent on her husband. Esperanza describes Sally’s confinement and dependency in the following way:

> Sally says she likes being married because now she gets to buy her own things when her husband gives her money. She is happy…Except he won’t let her talk on the telephone. And he doesn’t let her look out the window. And he doesn’t like her friends, so nobody gets to visit her unless he is working. She sits at home because she is afraid to go outside without his permission…She likes looking at the walls, at how neatly their corners meet, the linoleum roses on the floor, the ceiling smooth as wedding cake. (Cisneros 101-102)

Sally is financially dependent on her husband, and her ability to socialize with others is heavily restricted. She now adheres to the dependency, submissiveness, and self-sacrifice that is characteristic of the traditional and marianismo roles for Latino women. Like the other women on Mango Street who display these roles, she has found “her place by the window” (Cisneros 11). Thus, Sally demonstrates the cyclical and difficult to escape nature of the cultural expectation for Latino women. Additionally, as Esperanza’s contemporary, she also presents a more personal and accessible glimpse into the immediacy of this reality to Esperanza. Once again, Esperanza’s female role model ultimately adheres to the established expectations for women.

 

           Overall, Sally and the other examples of confined or oppressed women on Mango Street are not only significant because they illustrate the nature of the traditional expectations for women in Latino culture, but they also illustrate how they are exacerbated in an immigrant community in 1980s’ Chicago, particularly as a way for Latino men to reestablish their authority figure role in a place where they are marginalized as a minority. In _The House on Mango Street_ , Mango Street appears to fictionally depict a community established by immigrant Latinos, a specific “ethnic residential cluster” in Chicago that is the result of “channeled migration” (Howenstine 33). According to Diana Ştiuliuc, Esperanza’s social environment on Mango Street is influenced by “a double oppression: one within the patriarchal Chicano community which sticks to Mexican traditionalism, and one within the Anglo-American society, which, due to racial prejudice and misinterpretation of otherness, treats Chicanos/as as outsiders” (Ştiuliuc 291). While each of these oppressions are often viewed singularly, by Perilla, Bakeman, and Norris’s study, the latter may perpetuate the former. The novella depicts Mango Street as dilapidated, undesirable for inhabitation based on the nun’s astounded response, “You live _there_?”, impoverished, and segregated from neighborhoods associated with higher socioeconomic status (Cisneros 5). Esperanza describes the latter of these facets in the “Those Who Don’t” vignette:

> Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. They think we’re dangerous…They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake…All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight. Yeah. That is how it goes and goes. (Cisneros 28)

These descriptions and observations by Esperanza create a setting that reflects those of lower socioeconomic status Latino immigrants in Chicago as a result of the rapid influx and corresponding housing demands, that lead to a perpetuation of discrimination, in the city (Howenstine 34). The lower socioeconomic status of male Latinos in the novella, and by extension Chicago in the 1980s, is further illustrated by the lower income, unskilled employment of the men whose jobs are explicitly mentioned, such as Sally’s “marshmallow salesman” husband (Cisneros 101).

 

            Based on this poor socioeconomic context, the prevalence of exaggerated traditional and marianismo/machismo roles as well as female oppression and abuse in the novella seems to suggest a correlation between the socioeconomic situation of the Mango Street Latino community and the manifestation of cultural gender expectations. Based on the results of the aforementioned, non-fictional study by Perilla et al., this correlation is supported and explained as “due to the man's perceived loss of power relative to his perception of competency. The man may feel competent and not be competent, or he may be competent and not feel competent. Both of these situations may create conflict in Latino households, because the ‘machismo’ ethos demands that a male be the sole breadwinner and provider for his family” (Perilla et al. 336-337). In other words, the degredation experienced by immigrant, Latino men as a result of their poor socioeconomic status translates into a perceived necessity to compensate the undermining of their traditional role within the home. As evidenced in the Perilla et al. study, this compensation is largely manifested as abuse. Thus, _The House on Mango Street_ illustrates how the socioeconomic status of a community can influence the manifestation of extreme extensions of traditional gender roles, drastically influencing the social environment of individuals of that community as seen in Esperanza’s exposure to such an environment.

 

            A further example of the manifestation of the influence of the machismo and marianismo cultural scripts supposed to be exacerbated in immigrants beyond Esperanza’s observations of women on Mango Street is the event inferred to depict a sexual assault on Esperanza in the “Red Clowns” section. The vignette ends with Esperanza’s statement, “He wouldn’t let me go. He said I love you, I love you, Spanish Girl” (Cisneros 100). This statement, along with the limited details of the encounter, seems to depict the influence of the negative aspect of the traditional and extreme machismo roles on the perception of Latino women beyond the men of the Mango Street community. Based on the established cultural roles, Latino women are presented as submissive and dependent, and thus aggressive behavior and the effect of the belief that men are above women are also expected and even viewed as a norm. For Esperanza, this is a very personal, intimate, and critical encounter with the culture on Mango Street during her development, specifically the implications of the marianismo cultural script. Although it is not discussed much beyond this section, such an event must have been significant in solidifying her determination to diverge from her own ethnic culture’s expectations, to define herself by standards other than those dictated by Latino culture. As she earlier states, “I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain … I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate” (Cisneros 89). In other words, she is determined to deviate from the culturally expected roles for her.

 

            Overall, Esperanza’s social environment during these formative years on Mango Street is largely influenced by the cultural expectations placed on her by traditional Latino culture’s expectations that are exacerbated and even made detrimental by the socioeconomic status of the Mango Street community. Esperanza is exposed to these cultural expectations, evaluating them and ultimately determining that they are not what she desires for herself based on the female role models she observes. Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano describes the importance of these female role models who Esperanza observes and evaluates:

> It is the fate of the women in her _barrio_ that have the most profound impact on her, especially as she begins to develop sexually and learns that the same fate might be hers. Esperanza gathers strength from the experiences of these women to reject the imposition of rigid gender roles predetermined for her by her culture. (Yarbro-Bejarano 142)

Yarbro-Bejarano’s statement supports the assertion that Esperanza’s role models are critical for her decision to deviate from the expected, Latino gender roles as they contribute to her social environment. Thus, an instance of confinement that saturates Esperanza’s social environment and that she attempts to circumvent as she develops her unique identity is the traditional expectations for Latino women.

 

             Sandra Cisneros’s _The House on Mango Street_ is regarded as “an innovative type of Latina bildungsroman, a display of the corporal, emotional, and cultural development of the protagonist, and by voyeuristic extension, of [its community]” (Mayock 223). In this sense, the novella is a display of the constraints placed on young Latino women during the 1980s in ethnic communities established during an increase in Latin American immigration to Chicago as it relates to their identity. One of the major sources of confinement is the cultural expectations for women based on their traditional, Latino gender roles, roles that are exacerbated as a result of the influence of socioeconomic pressures associated with marginalized immigrant groups, resulting in the manifestation of extreme scripts of those traditional roles, such as the marianismo and machismo scripts in Latino culture. Through her observations and experiments with female role models, Esperanza determines that these cultural expectations, which “have served to lock in many real-life Latina women,” are not what she desires for herself (Mayock 223). She diverges from this aspect of her Hispanic/Latino identity, creating a new, hybrid identity. Diana Ştiuliuc relates this divergence in the context of the end of the novella:

> The narrator [Cisneros] revises some preconceptions, changing the perception of the female identity as a permanent thing, a natural trait produced through generational succession, and long residence in the home(land), to a recognition of identity as architecture, (wo)-man made, and therefore always subject to demolition, reconstruction, and reinvention. Esperanza’s desire is to reconstruct herself, also giving her ethnicity its rightful place in the house of memory. (Ştiuliuc 292)

At the end of the novella, when Esperanza relates to Alicia her “sadness” because of her lack of identity and belonging on Mango Street and claims that she “never had a house,” Alicia responds by stating, “like it or not you are Mango Street” (Cisneros 106, 107). Alicia’s statement resounds with Ştiuliuc’s statement. Despite that Esperanza no longer completely identifies with the Mango Street community, nor does she desire to, the formation of the identity with which she does associate is the cumulative result of her experiences on Mango Street. She is a product of, and thus represents, Mango Street. Like the “four skinny trees” outside the “sad red house” on Mango Street, she was one who was capable of “growing despite concrete,” despite the constraints of her social environment influenced by the cultural expectations for her and the socioeconomic status of the Latino community on Mango Street (Cisneros 75, 109).

 

**Works Cited**

Cisneros, Sandra. _The House on Mango Street_. 1984. Vintage Books, 1991.

Howenstine, Erick. “Ethnic Change and Segregation in Chicago.” _EthniCity: Geographic Perspectives on Ethnic Change in Modern Cities_ , edited by Curtis C. Roseman, Hans Dieter Laux, and Gunter Thieme, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996, pp. 31-50.

Mayock, Ellen C. “The Bicultural Construction of Self in Cisneros, Alvarez, and Santiago.” _Bilingual Review_ , vol. 23, no. 3, 1998, pp. 223-229. _JSTOR_ , www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.utk.edu:90/stable/25745627. Accessed 25 April 2017.

Perilla, Julia L., Bakeman, Roger, and Fran H. Norris. “Culture and Domestic Violence: The Ecology of Abused Latinas.” _Violence and Victims_ , vol. 9, no. 4, 1994, pp. 325-339. _EBSCO_ , proxy.lib.utk.edu:90/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=28h&AN=23992280&scope=site. Accessed 29 April 2017.

Ştiuliuc, Diana. “The American Dream in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street.”  _Analele Universităţii Ovidius din Constanţa. Seria Filologie_ , vol. 23, no. 1, 2012, pp. 287-296. _Google Scholar_ , litere.univ-ovidius.ro/Anale/13_volumul_XXIII_2012_1/22_Stiuliuc.pdf. Accessed 30 April 2017.

Szadziuk, Maria. “Culture as Transition: Becoming a Woman in Bi-Ethnic Space.” _Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature_ , vol. 32, no. 3, Sep. 1999, pp. 109-129. _JSTOR_ , www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.utk.edu:90/stable/44029803. Accessed 25 April 2017.

Yarbro-Bejarano, Yvonne. “Chicana Literature from a Chicana Feminist Perspective.” _The Americas Review_ , vol. 15, no. 3, 1987, pp. 139-145. _MLA International Bibliography_ , proxy.lib.utk.edu:90/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/53174749?accountid=14766. Accessed 30 April 2017.

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, thank you for reading!


End file.
